Post-it stack via libraryman.

Sarah Palin is scheduled to be deposed on Friday in the second round of "troopergate" investigations currently being conducted by the AK personnel board. Which is interesting because I still think that Palin may have broken state law in how she allowed multiple state personnel files to be handled by husband, Todd. And I’m wondering whether that issue will be part of the investigation.

Let me explain why this is important.

Any of the labor lawyers out there can vouch me on this, but the one thing that is sacrosanct and handled with kid gloves in any office — for legal reasons that are spelled out expressly to employers — are personnel records. You don’t pass them around to people with no authority to access them. You certainly do not hand them over to your spouse so he can cruise the files to dig up dirt on your employees. Because, if you do, someone can sue your ass.

If I had to guess, I’d say that there are state lawyers still banging their heads on the wall on this issue. Marcy caught something earlier which I want to highlight:

But I think the real tell–where Todd Palin may be in a heap of trouble–is in this detail from the NYT story.

On Jan. 4, 2007, a month into the Palin administration and his tenure as public safety commissioner, Mr. Monegan was called to the governor’s Anchorage office to meet Todd Palin. Mr. Palin was seated at a conference table with three stacks of personnel files. That, Mr. Monegan recalled, was the first time he heard the name Mike Wooten. [my emphasis]

Personnel files. The implication from this story is that Palin had Wooten’s personnel file laying there on a table when he had this first meeting with Walt Monegan. Even in the phone call between Bailey and Dial, there’s tension over whether Bailey–a government employee, after all–had accessed Wooten’s personnel file. Bailey had suggested he got it through follow-up on the workers comp issue.

State law in Alaska says this about state personnel files [Sec. 39.25.080 (a)]:

(a) State personnel records, including employment applications and examination and other assessment materials, are confidential and are not open to public inspection except as provided in this section.

Having read through the limited exceptions for publicly available information, I see no "sleeps with the governor, so total access, Dude!" one. Just so you know.

From public reports, we find there are multiple complaints against Gov. Palin being investigated by the personnel board regarding various improprieties. But no information has been made public on whether the Todd Palin personnel files access question is part of the mix. This could get interesting.